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Wednesday, 4 February 2009

Miliband Bats for Pakistan's Military (UPIASIA)

M.D. Nalapat

Manipal, India — Someone forgot to tell
Britain's foreign secretary and would-be prime minister, David Miliband, that
the Union Jack no longer flies over New Delhi’s Viceregal Palace, now renamed
"Rashtrapati Bhavan," or "Head of the Nation House." During
his visit to India last month, his hosts found Miliband’s conduct and views so
offensive that a relatively junior official from the External Affairs Ministry
was trotted out to insist that India did not need "unsolicited"
advice.

The official was referring to Miliband's
motif during the visit – that New Delhi ought to make concessions on Kashmir so
the Pakistan army would assist NATO with more sincerity and efficacy than it
has since the 2001 NATO-Taliban war started in Afghanistan.

Clearly, Miliband is unaware of the
dynamics of decision making in a democracy. He appears to view India in the
same league as China, Pakistan or Saudi Arabia, in each of which a single
institution – the Communist Party, the army and the monarchy, respectively –
calls the shots.

Were Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh
and External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee to follow Miliband’s peremptory
advice – enabling the Pakistan army to gain through diplomacy concessions that
they have thus far been unable to wrest by jihad – not only would domestic
politics in India be inflamed to Bangladeshi proportions, but the Wahabbis that
control the Pakistan army would be able to recover some of the ground they have
lost with regard to public opinion and moderate civil society.

As for Afghanistan, Miliband has fallen
into the same delusion as did former U.S. President George W. Bush in 2001 –
that the Pakistan army is interested in the defeat of the Taliban. In reality,
so dense are the linkages between the army and the Taliban that the lower ranks
would sabotage any order from the generals to seriously do battle with the
jihadists, should any of the top brass give such a command.

No such command has been given, even during
the period in office of the West's favorite, former Pakistan President Pervez
Musharraf. These days Musharraf is lobbying governments to pressure New Delhi
into making the very concessions on Kashmir seen as essential by Miliband if
his side is to succeed in Afghanistan.

Before he braves the chill that he so
manfully created between the foreign policy establishments of India and Britain
and comes once again to the subcontinent – this time presumably to visit the
constituency of an opposition politician, to balance the smell of partisanship
created by his embrace during the last visit of Sonia Gandhi's personal and
political heir Rahul Gandhi – hopefully Miliband will do some reading on the
writings and rantings of the Lashkar-e-Toiba, the very institution he sought to
establish a linkage with for Indian concessions in Kashmir.

This organization insists categorically
that its operations in India – and now in the rest of the world – have little
to do with Kashmir. Its stated objective is to bring back Mughal rule to India –
the whole of it, not just Kashmir.

It takes an astonishing naivety to
seriously believe, as Miliband does,that the LeT would be satisfied with
Kashmir, even assuming that the state were to fall into its clutches. Kashmir
would immediately become the platform for an extension of jihad into the rest
of India, as well as into Pakistan, a country that is enduring a cruel blowback
from its CIA-assisted development as a manufacturer of jihadis.

Any concession sought to be won through the
use of terror needs to remain elusive to its perpetrators, so as not to
encourage the view that terror as an instrument can yield payoffs. Almost every
terrorist group has around it an umbra of do-gooders and busybodies of the
Miliband school, who believe that one-time payments to a bully can ensure
peace.

Back in the 1930s,there was the view that
the securing of the Sudetenland parts of Czechoslovakia would ensure that
Hitler transformed himself into a gentleman. That did not happen with the
Fuehrer, nor will concessions on Kashmir have any lasting effect on the
malignity of the LeT.

Sadly, not just Miliband but a significant
section of NATO has yet to internalize the reasons behind the regeneration of
the Taliban. The militia got its first boost by the U.S. decision in 2001 to
exclude Northern Alliance forces from operations in southern Afghanistan. It’s
next break came from NATO's steady prising loose from the Kabul power structure
the Northern Alliance, replacing it with elements recommended by the Pakistan
military, many of whom lack either the intention or the stomach to fight the
Taliban.

With the progressive elimination of the
Northern Alliance from the governing structures in regions across two-thirds of
Afghanistan, the way was cleared for the Taliban to return. Since 2006, it has
developed safe havens in Afghanistan, fed by supplies from Pakistan.

It is ironic that elements in so many NATO
states would like to see India punished in Kashmir for achieving precisely what
the alliance has itself failed to do in Afghanistan, which is to beat back the
jihadists. In 2001, this writer suggested to friends in the U.S. administration
that it was India rather than Pakistan that would be the more desirable ally in
the War on Terror. But George W. Bush chose Pakistan. Fortunately for him, he
will be on perhaps the second volume of his memoirs before the consequences of
this error of judgment become evident in his country.

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About Prof. MD Nalapat

Prof. Madhav Das Nalapat (aka MD Nalapat or Monu Nalapat), holds the UNESCO Peace Chair and is Director of the Department of Geopolitics at Manipal University, India. The former Coordinating Editor of the Times of India, he writes extensively on security, policy and international affairs. Prof. Nalapat has no formal role in government, although he is said to influence policy at the highest levels. @MDNalapat

MD Nalapat's anthology 'Indutva' (1999)

In 1999, Har-Anand published Indutva an anthology of MD Nalapat's 1990s columns from the Times of India. The individual columns are posted here, in 1998 and 1999 of the blog archive, though the exact dates of publication are uncertain.